Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.

In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”

However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”

Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

Interesting to see that story reported in the Times, of all places. Apart from The Independent, no British newspaper – not even George Monbiot’s home the Guardian – has been drinking the AGW Kool-Aid quite so fervently as the Times. From its vast hordes of Eco correspondents to its Op Ed editors and writers, the Times prides itself on being greener than Dr Rajendra Pachauri’s favourite green underpants after a month’s detox diet of spinach, wheat grass juice, parsley and pure essence of ultra-viridian greenness.

So yes, for the Times to report on the Holy Father of the global AGW movement making a total dork of himself is indeed a landmark event.

This is not, of course, the first occasion on which Arctic sea ice coverage has proved stubbornly unhelpful to the Climate Fear Promotion lobby. In 2007 all the Warmists’ dreams seemed to be coming true when satellite images showed arctic ice coverage receding at record levels. (That’s since satellite records began way, waaaay back in 1978).

Still it was enough to inspire intrepid kayaker and human polar bear Lewis Gordon Pugh to launch a dramatic September 2008 expedition to raise awareness of AGW by kayaking all the way to the North Pole. Tragically about 600 miles short of his destination he got stuck by the ice.

After the inconvenient arctic sea ice recovery of 2008, Warmists attempted to finesse their argument by saying that although most of the ice seemed to have come back it was the WRONG KIND OF ICE. They called it “rotten ice” – something that deceives satellites into thinking its proper and thick when it is in fact rubbish and thin. This latest exercise in excuse-making has now been demolished on the Watts Up With That site, which points that not one of the major scientific institutions that monitor sea ice levels have supported this theory.